The Giants Thrive on Squeaking By

If the playoffs were decided by overall run differential, the San Francisco Giants might as well pile into the team Winnebago now and save themselves a week of World Series embarrassment.

ENLARGE

San Francisco Giants team members celebrate after scoring from third on a sacrifice fly by Juan Uribe during the ninth inning of Game 4 of baseball's National League Championship Series.
Associated Press

Though the Giants have won seven of the 10 postseason games they've played, the team has somehow only scored one more run than its opponents. Since MLB started using its current postseason format in 1995, only one World Series team—the 1997 Cleveland Indians—has been so pedestrian, according to Stats Inc. The average run differential for the 32 World Series teams in this span is +14.3, and 11 of the teams outscored their opponents by at least 20. The Texas Rangers, whom the Giants are playing, are outscoring their opponents by a gaudy 27 runs.

But in the instances since 1995 when one World Series team had a different run differential than the other, the team with the smaller differential actually won half the time—albeit in a small sample size. This contradicts one of baseball's well-respected analytical statistics called Pythagorean Expectation, a measure developed by stat guru Bill James that says a team's run differential is a good determinant for what its winning percentage should be.

Perhaps the best thing the Giants have going for them is baseball history. Fifty years ago, when the postseason was just the World Series, the Pittsburgh Pirates were outscored by the New York Yankees by 28 runs—the most-ever in a single postseason series—but still took home the championship.

—David Biderman

The Nail-Biters

The World Series teams since 1995 that had the smallest win differential in the first two rounds of the postseason.

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